Category: Coaching

The icy winter wind is blasting through the carefully insulated thermal windowpanes here in Boston! Not to worry – as 2013 has started, I’ve been like a hibernating bear, hunkered under a blanket.

Instead of sleeping the winter away, however, I’ve been at the computer a lot working intensively on some special projects in my businesses, in addition to continuing to support my private coaching clients.

New, no-cost Creative Learning Course

Did you know about the new free and online course in creative learning that MIT is offering?

It’s called “Learning Creative Learning” and I’m signed up.

Here’s why …

Creativity is crucial in business.
Learning how to be better at it is not optional.

Helping others learn is crucial in the work I do as a professional coach.
Is learning, creativity – or both – important in your business, too?

It’s MIT
Seems like it will be a cool course. Worst case scenario, I’ll be able to say “I studied at MIT.” (smile)

You can go at your own pace, and choose between fitting self-study into a busy schedule (like me) or take the time to dive in deeply by joining a study group.

I’ve never done anything with the MIT Media lab, and they didn’t ask me to tell you know about this. So I can’t tell you a lot about it beyond what you can read on their website.

Someone recommended it to me and it looks like a good learning opportunity.

If your work involves learning and creativity it can probably help you, so I wanted to let you know about it.

Signups close tomorrow, so click through to sign up now while you can..

P.S. Are you getting a good start on your business and marketing plans for 2013?

If you’ve hit some road blocks or want to move ahead more quickly, contact me for a free consultation to explore some of the changes you could make and how business coaching can help you bring in revenue faster. Go here and pick a time www.SpeakWithMark.com

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It’s not enough to simply get great results in your work with clients. You have to know what the results are. Then you need to share this clearly with those interested in your services.

When people get out their wallet they want to know what they’ll get. It might be a pair of jeans, a new pair of glasses, a new resume, completed tax return or a back adjustment. People don’t want to throw money into the air like it was confetti at a wedding.

Your skills, modalities and professional services are intangible. You need to make them tangible so people can understand what they’ll get (both on a practical level and on an internal emotional level).

The first step is knowing the results you consistently get with clients.

The next step is to go deeper into the results. Besides the obvious things like a completed tax return or a clutter free home, what do you give your clients? It could be anything from ease of mind about the risk of tax audits, to the way you answer questions in a complete but nonjudgmental way. Or it might be something unusual. For example, public relations consultant Joan Stewart shares dog jokes, quotes and funny videos in her weekly ezine, and even sells an ebook full of them.

If you’re just starting a new business, you may have to make some of it up, based upon the results you intend to get. This isn’t about being deceptive, it’s simply about looking at what you are truly capable of based on your skills, training, and related experience. Based on that what are you planning to achieve? You can look at past experience where you used similar skills in a different setting, whether or not you were paid for it at the time.

Then go work with clients and take note of the results you get – in their words. Build requests for feedback into your work with them. This can actually serve your clients by helping them to notice and celebrate the progress they are making.

Some of the results of your work – what people get from you – will be different than what you expect. Adjust your marketing language according to what you learn that clients get from you.

If you’re just starting out, and you don’t have enough clients to find out what your results are, then you need to do whatever it takes to get those first few clients so you can figure this out. Do pro bono or barter work is a great way to get enough experience and confidence to speak convincingly about the results you get.

Taking the time to do pro bono or barter work may be discouraging, but, when you’re starting something new, there are no shortcuts to stable and lasting success.

If you’re not getting consistent, meaningful results from your work with clients, privately or in groups, that should be a top priority problem to fix.

There are many things you can do to get better results. Here are a few ideas:

Meet more often with clients. If they don’t want to pay for the added time, be frank with them that they can’t expect to get results without it.

Be more flexible about contact between meetings

Give your clients “homework” – learning assignments to do on their own. Only work with clients willing to do the assignments.

Be more upfront with clients that results take time, and sell packages that have more sessions in them.

Be meticulous about writing down the results clients get, and what they say is important to them. Take notes after every meeting or any time they mention progress. Organize the notes and look for common themes across clients. Over time trends will emerge.

Take further education in your field or profession.

Meet regularly with a professional mentor or consultant to help you.

If you’re not getting results or you don’t know what they are, you’re building your business on a shaky foundation.

What results do you get from your work with clients? Are you able to talk about them in a concrete, tangible way? If not, what are you doing so you can start doing so?

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This week‘s Marketing Cafe™ is abouthow you can deepen resilience, sense situations freshly and find renewed energy to move forward, even when times are tough.

We’ll talk about and demonstrate how to explore the ‘what’s not’ or ‘what should be’ in a way that opens doors to the wisdom of ‘what actually is‘ and ‘what’s possible.’ This program will help shift a previously distant, unattainable destination into an energizing, transformational journey.

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One of the challenges of finding a profitable niche as a coach, or in any kind of professional service, is that the niche that works best for you isn’t going to be a copy of what works best for someone else.

Here’s an exercise to help you explore where the most profitable coaching niche is for you.

Draw 3 overlapping circles on a piece of paper. The circles should overlap each other a little but not completely. Combined together they form a Read More